Vacation - Day 9

The plan for the day was to drive until we got to central California, then find a motel to spend the night. Those plans would change!

We got a bit of a late start and headed out of Crescent City with our sights on the Samoa Cookhouse in Eureka. I had eaten there with Grandpa back in the '70s, and we were looking forward to their home-style, lumberjack-sized breakfast. Unfortunately, we had to stop along the way due to a false I-peed-my-pants alert, and we missed breakfast by minutes. Still, we had a very nice lunch of salad, soup, roast pork, and mashed potatoes, and David got the hot chocolate that he'd been looking forward to.

The rest of the day was mostly driving. When we got close to San Francisco, we took the impressive 5.5-mile-long Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, which spans the upper arm of the bay, and we lucked out 'cause we were headed in the non-toll direction.

By the time we had cut across east to Interstate 5 south of Stockton, it was close to 7:00 p.m. Sherry and I looked at each other and said, "Should we just try to drive all the way home tonight?" So that's what we did.

The Padre game was coming in clear on XX Sports Radio 1090 AM (which I sometimes can't even pick up in our house), so listening to that kept me busy during the mostly uninteresting drive. They were playing the Dodgers, and the teams were nice enough to take the game into extra innings. The Padres eventually won just after we entered Los Angeles County.

Sherry and I swapped driving duties a couple times. Unfortunately, Sherry was behind the wheel when we got stuck in a huge traffic jam south of Burbank (somebody had flipped their vehicle), but once we got through that (around midnight) it was smooth sailing. David tried to stay awake the whole way, but fell asleep with about a half hour left on our trip. We pulled into the driveway sometime after 2:00 a.m.

Great trip!

Vacation - Day 8

Today was a big day as we took in the sights of Crescent City and its surroundings.

After a quick breakfast, we headed down Highway 101 to the Trees of Mystery. Out front were huge statues of Paul Bunyan and his ox Babe. (Sherry and I remembered his ox's name as being Blue, you know, on account of he's blue. No. It's Babe.) The rest of the attraction included a short hike passing many huge and unusual redwoods, followed by a sky ride to the top of the mountain.

A little farther south on 101 we hit the Tour Thru Tree, a giant redwood that you can drive your car through (perhaps so named because there's already a Drive Thru Tree). Not a bad deal for the owners; they collect your five bucks and you drive through their tree.

Next we headed back north and ate lunch at a seafood restaurant called The Beachcomber. What a great place: a small, casual, older restaurant, right on the beach, with a nautical motif. Something you might expect in New England (if you're like me and have never been to New England).

It was time for the kids to burn off some energy, so we headed to Kidtown, a large, all-wooden playground in the middle of the city. Sherry and I agreed it was one of the best (if not the best) playgrounds we'd ever seen. David and Charlie had fun of course.

Afterwards, we headed back to camp to rest (first making a quick stop to buy fireworks). Then we hopped back in the car and drove to the Battery Point Lighthouse; we had to wait until low tide because the walk across to the lighthouse is covered in water the rest of the time. The kids were more interested in the tide pools than anything else. David and Charlie picked up sea stars and hunted for crabs.

Back at the campground, David and Charlie attended an ice cream social. Then it was fast asleep after a busy day.

Vacation - Day 7

Today was Driving Day. After a quick breakfast in the hotel, we hit the pavement for the long drive to Crescent City.

It rained more than half the trip, but we made pretty good time. We lucked onto a McDonald's with a PlayPlace outside Portland so the kids could get some exercise. When we arrived at the KOA Kampground, it was still light outside. This was our favorite Kampground of the three we stayed at. Our Kabin was far from the highway, nestled amongst the redwoods.

For dinner, we figured it'd be hard to beat our favorite die-hard Denny's. There was a motorcyclist sitting across from us who had driven straight through from Bakersfield to Crescent City. He asked us what the weather had been like for our drive down from Seattle, as he was heading that way the next day. He wasn't pleased to hear about all the rain.

After dinner, we walked through the drizzle over to a Rite-Aid to buy some candy and gum. Then it was back to camp for some shut-eye.

Vacation - Day 6

We got off to a late start this morning, but that worked to our advantage. Had we awoken "on time," we would have been rushing to make a 10:00 tour of Seattle's underground and would have never made it. Since we were late, we were able to change our schedule to a more relaxed one.

We headed over to Mike and Majken's, and we all drove down to Seattle's new Olympic Sculpture Park. The kids were able to run around and release some energy, but no touching the giant sculptures. At one point, a freight train passed by, and the kids charged toward the railing overlooking the tracks picking up sticks and waving them like the villagers from Frankenstein.

We walked down the beach a ways, and the kids were able to climb on some giant boulders. Then we bought hot dogs from a street vendor and ate them while sitting on sculptures that looked like giant eyes.

Next we split up into two groups. Majken took Adama and Charlie to the Aquarium, while Mike, Sherry, Sana, Bassie, David and I headed downtown for our underground tour.

Our group drove around and finally found some pricey parking in a garage near Pioneer Square (it just so happened a Mariners game was going on that afternoon), then we bought our tickets for the 1:00 Bill Speidel's Underground Tour. We had some time to kill before the tour began, so we browsed through Magic Mouse Toys across the street.

The tour was pretty interesting. It took us down to what used to be the area's ground level. (It was decided to rebuild the city one to two stories higher after the Great Seattle Fire burned down most of Seattle's central business district in 1889.)

After the tour, we bought some chocolate across the street at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, then headed back to Mike and Majken's to meet up with the other group for some rest and relaxation. While we were there, David, Sana and Bassie played over at a neighborhood playground for a while.

Come dinnertime, we all first drove to a novelty shop called Archie McPhee. David bought some scary fake fingernails, Charlie got some bubblegum, and I bought some bacon flavored mints. Also, Sherry bought me a corn dog air freshener for my car.

Just down the street, we ate dinner at a fish and chips stand called Totem House Seafood & Chowder; quite tasty. Then we drove right across the street to the Ballard Locks, which lie between Puget Sound and Lakes Union and Washington. In addition to watching boats travel through the locks, we were able to watch migrating salmon swim through the fish ladder that was integrated into the facility.

Before we left the locks, the kids found a great big grassy hill that they were able to roll down. Then it was back to Mike and Majken's to say our goodbyes. Just before we left, Charlie broke one of Adama's toys, causing quite a bit of drama. However, the toy was easily fixed, and as we were getting into the van, Adama was inconsolable at the thought of Charlie leaving. Charlie and I walked back to the front door so the two of them could have a final opportunity to hug and say goodbye.

Vacation - Day 5

The morning was uneventful as the kids ate cereal and we packed up the van for the trip to Seattle.

Along the way, we saw an ad for Brown Bear Car Wash. Charlie was familiar with Brown Bear from some Internet commercials we had downloaded for him. We got off at the next exit to try to find it, but no luck.

We weren't able to check into our hotel early, so we headed straight to Mike and Majken's. The kids were all very excited to see each other. Mike and Majken had a picnic lunch planned for us, so we all walked over to Meridian Playground about a half mile away. It was a great big park with lots of equipment for the kids to play on and a water area where they could play in the wet sand.

After lunch we checked into the Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites, North Seattle, and invited everyone over for some swimming pool action. Mike and I joined in while Majken and Sherry chatted poolside. We had the whole pool area to ourselves, which was nice 'cause the kids were very loud.

We finished off the day back at Mike and Majken's with a delicious dinner of salmon (for the grown-ups) and hot dogs (for the kids) along with fresh corn on the cob and chocolate fondue for dessert!

Vacation - Day 4

We slept late this morning and woke up just in time to say goodbye to Liz, who was on her way to Camp Invention, a summer day camp. When Dawn returned from dropping Liz off, she and Andy made us a hearty breakfast of eggs and sausage. Just after breakfast, we met Andy's sister-in-law when she stopped by to have Andy sign some papers.

After that, we spent some time outside, enjoying the nice weather, sitting out by the fish pond. Eventually we decided we had to be on our way, so we said our thank yous and goodbyes, and hit the road.

Along the way we passed a Burgerville, a regional fast-food joint that Andy and Dawn suggested if we were in the mood for another hamburger. (Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop.) What caught our eye was their sign for "Oregon Strawberry Shakes". Doesn't that sound a lot better than just "Strawberry Shakes"?

The drive up to Olympia Campground was uneventful, except for an unexpected construction delay just before we got there. The campground was nice with lots of trees, although our Kabin was a little too close to the road for our liking.

We went for a short hike to collect some kindling for our campfire, then the kids played on a very old teeter-totter and swing set. We got the campfire going (with more than a little difficulty), and Sherry made us some delicious tacos. Then we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores!

As we hit the sack, we read a couple scary stories. The first was "Widdershins" about a boy who conjures up the Devil in the shape of a black dog. David said it wasn't that scary, and Charlie fell asleep in the middle of it! The second was "A Face in the Dark" about a man who meets people with no faces. Again, David said it wasn't that scary, but it spooked Sherry and me!

Vacation - Day 3

We had a continental breakfast at the motel (bagels, pastries, coffee, orange juice), then it was a quick two-hour drive up to Andy and Dawn's in Dundee.

Their daughter Emily was out of town visiting relatives, but 8-year-old Elizabeth was home, and she and David hit it off right away. They played Nintendo DS games while the grown-ups talked and Charlie played on the com-poo-ter.

Lunch was a fantastic cook-it-yourself pizza from Papa Murphy's Take 'n' Bake. Then Sherry and Charlie walked to a nearby park while Andy, Dawn and I reminisced, and Elizabeth and David continued to play.

For dinner, we went to the Ruby Tuesday in nearby McMinnville. I always see ads for Ruby Tuesday on TV, but there are none in Southern California. Hamburgers are one of their specialties, and mine (an Alpine Swiss burger) was very good. Andy also had a hamburger, Sherry and Elizabeth had mini burgers, Charlie had mac 'n' cheese, and David had shrimp. (Dawn stayed home to rest a bit.)

Back at the house, Andy and Dawn made chocolate chip cookies from Papa Murphy's Take 'n' Bake dough. (We gotta get one of these in San Diego!)

After dinner, Andy and I stayed up and talked about movies, et al, while everyone else went to bed.

Vacation - Day 2

The kids woke up bright and early excited about the pancake breakfast that the KOA Kampground was sponsoring that morning. We got dressed quickly and headed over to a small playground where David met a brother and sister from Germany, and Charlie played with a 4-year-old boy named Damian. At 8:00, the pancake breakfast started. A man with a huge outdoor grill took our egg orders, and piled the food high on our plates. After our hearty meal, we hit the road again.

Although we had to cover about the same mileage as the day before, today's journey was much smoother. There was no traffic, and the only glitch (if you can call it that) was that we couldn't find a place to have our picnic lunch. We were in the Mt. Shasta Recreational Area, and the only picnic tables we could find were in areas that required a camping fee. So, we finally threw in the towel and just ate in the car.

When we checked into the Best Western New Oregon Motel at about 5:30 p.m., something wasn't quite right. The room stunk. I mean, it literally stunk. Like maybe a pet had had an accident behind the bed that never got cleaned up. Sherry went back to the front desk and they gave us another room that smelled like freshly cleaned motel. Much better.

David picked the restaurant for dinner: The Oregon Electric Station which was built around an old railroad depot. David had fish and chips, Charlie had chicken strips (after sending back cheesy noodles 'cause they weren't enough like mac 'n' cheese), Sherry had a Caesar salad, and I had fettuccine Alfredo.

After dinner we took a quick walk around downtown Eugene where we saw a great big freight train hauling logs go by. Then we drove around the University of Oregon campus (I had more than a little trouble getting my bearings), and it was back to the motel for a little indoor swimming pool action.

Vacation - Day 1

We dropped off Buddy at his boarding house about 9:00 a.m., and we were on our way!

We made a quick stop at "Grandma's Chevron", then headed to Lincoln Park in Los Angeles for lunch. The traffic was very heavy, so we didn't get there until around noon. The kids played on playground equipment, and Sherry made us a nice lunch of sandwiches, carrots, chips and... pudding!

Back on the freeway, traffic was still real tight. We finally hit the Grapevine around 2:30. It was pretty smooth sailing after that, although we did have to stop for a while at a Carl's Jr. while Charlie tried to go potty. We powered through the rest of the drive, and arrived at our KOA Kampground in West Sacramento at 8:58 p.m. Turned out the office closed at 9:00; had we been any later, they would have been closed and:

• We wouldn't have gotten our Kabin for the night.
• We would have been out the $55.00 deposit.
• We would have had to find a motel to stay at or sleep in the van!

But, we weren't late, and we got our Kabin. And since we didn't even know we had to get there by 9:00, we avoided the stress that would have come with trying to meet a deadline.

The kids were Krazy with joy when they saw the log Kabin we would be staying in. It sat beside a small lake and had bunk beds. It was pretty late by the time we settled in, but eventually the kids drifted off to sleep.

Spider Man Visits

The spider man from the Natural History Museum came out to the house today to take samples of our brown widows. Unfortunately, I had killed an adult this morning before work, but luckily we had a big ol' egg sac with hundreds of babies to give him. He said he'd have to look at them under the microscope to make an absolute positive ID, but that based on the shape of the egg sacs, they were indeed brown widows. Our backyard is the furthest east in San Diego County that they've been discovered.

While Sherry was showing spider man one of the old abandoned brown widow webs, a black widow came out and surprised them. (Spider man said it wasn't unusual to turn over an outside bench or table and find a brown widow living in one corner and a black widow living in the other.) He carefully coaxed her into a jar to add to his samples. He later went on to say that when brown widows make their way into an area, black widows sometimes mysteriously disappear...

Sherry also got to talking to him about brown recluses because she thought she had seen one a few years back. Spider man said that, based on the number of brown recluse diagnoses being made in California, there should be at least 30 million of them creeping around. Yet not a single one has been found here since the 1960s. He then directed us to a web page written by an exasperated arachnologist at the University of California, Riverside titled "Myth of the Brown Recluse" which ends with all-capitalized red letters, "THERE ARE NO BROWN RECLUSE SPIDERS LIVING IN CALIFORNIA."

Donkey Kong Jungle Beat

David gave me an early Father's Day gift this week: Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. It's a Donkey Kong adventure game where you use bongos to make DK run, jump, punch, etc. Pretty fun. Plus, since it came with its own set of bongos, we now have two sets of bongos to play Donkey Konga 2 with!

San Diego County Fair

We hit the San Diego County (nee Del Mar) Fair yesterday, and the experience was great. Even though it was the opening weekend, it wasn't that crowded for a Sunday. We arrived around 11:30 and didn't hit any traffic.

Highlights:

• We parked in the dirt lot right by the tram pick-up. (Charlie liked when the tram went through a tunnel.)
• We saw pigs, sheep (getting sheared), goats, and cows.
• Charlie and David had corn dogs.
• All four of us rode the Sky Ride over to Kiddieland.
• David and Charlie went on eleven different rides, including some roller coasters and giant slides.
• I had deep-fried cola with whipped cream (just felt like eating strips of deep fried batter).
• Sherry had a frozen banana... with nuts (first time ever)!
• David and Charlie split a HUGE bag of cotton candy.
• We all split an order of freshly made potato chips.
• We saw two different model train set-ups.

GDTVD

GDTVD is not what it once was. For its first seven years, it was single people sitting around in an apartment for three days watching television and eating junk food. Now, almost twenty years since its inception, GDTVD has evolved into a single-day party for kids, including swimming in the pool and playing on the swing set. The TV and the junk food are still there, but now they're secondary.

But before you start pining for the old days, consider all this:

• We're not as young as we once were. Sitting around eating junk food for three days was hard enough in our twenties. In our forties, it's downright dangerous.
• Classic TV is more accessible now than in 1988. You don't need a party like GDTVD to catch episodes of "Green Acres" or "I Dream of Jeannie". Just turn on TV Land.
  
• The kids really, REALLY like the new GDTVD.
  

Plus, GDTVD is still a great way to catch up with people that we only see once a year. And, if you like, you can still plop yourself down in front of the tube with a Ding Dong and a corn dog and watch Gilligan screw up yet another rescue.

GDTVD is dead. Long live GDTVD.

Brown Widow Spiders

So, while Sherry and I were setting up for GDTVD, we saw a spider making a web over by the pool shed. The spider looked very suspicious, and on closer inspection, it turned out to be a black widow. (Or so it seemed at the time. It was black and had the distinctive red hourglass marking on its abdomen.)

I tried to capture it in a jar to show the kids the next day, but I ended up wounding it pretty badly so I had to kill it.

The next day, Sherry was cleaning out some swim goggles for the kids, and there hiding in the corner was another black widow. Yikes! However, this one was more brown than black. In fact, it wasn't a solid color at all; it sort of had black and brown and yellow markings. But that red hourglass was unmistakable.

The next day, Sherry was cleaning under one of the TV trays that had been outside, and she found yet another widow. This one was brownish like the one that had been in the goggles. But this time, there were three egg sacs sitting in her web. The egg sacs proved to be the crucial key in determining the true identity of these spiders.

Turns out these were all brown widow spiders. (The egg sacs of brown widows are unique in that they have pointed projections, giving them a shape similar to a World War II naval mine. The egg sacs of other widow spiders, including the black widow, are smooth.) Brown widows vary from light tan to dark brown or almost black, and their hourglass marking is typically more orange than red. Their venom is twice as potent as black widow venom (however that's measured), but they do not inject as much venom as a black widow. They are very timid and do not defend their web. They're also slightly smaller than the black widow.

The chances of getting bitten by a brown widow are low because of their skittishness, and dying from their bite is quite rare, but it can still be painful. Of course we've told the kids to watch out for them, and we're going to do some cleaning to try to wipe out any webs.